Absurd Person Singular
A: Alan Ayckbourn Pf: 1972, Scarborough Pb: 1974 G: Com. in 3 acts S: Three kitchens in neighbouring houses in an English town, 1970s C: 3m, 3fHouse-proud Jane Hopcroft is cleaning her neat modern ...
Alain Resnais
(1922– )French film director, who became one of the New Wave of film-makers.Born in Vannes, Resnais studied acting and attended the Institut des Hautes Études Cinématographiques. He first made ...
Aleksandr Ostrovsky
(1823–86)Widely acknowledged as Russia's greatest playwright, he was also the most prolific, producing 47 original dramas and 22 translations of foreign plays. Comparatively unknown in the West, his ...
Apollo Theatre
London, in Shaftesbury Avenue, seating 796 in three tiers, opened in 1901 with a musical comedy, The Belle of Bohemia. Although it was a failure, later productions had good runs ...
Colin Blakely
(1930–87)Irish actor, whose rich stage career was paralleled by a prolific career as a character actor in film and television. His first professional engagement was with the Group Theatre ...
Comedy Theatre
London, in Panton Street, off the Haymarket. This theatre, seating 820 on four tiers, opened in 1881 and housed a series of light operas until in 1887 Beerbohm Tree took ...
Criterion Theatre
London, in Piccadilly Circus. Originally an adjunct to Spiers and Pond's Criterion restaurant, this theatre was built entirely underground. A three-tier auditorium seating 675, it opened in 1874 and ...
Dame Celia Johnson
(1908–82),English actress. She made her début in Shaw's Major Barbara in Huddersfield in 1928 and was first seen in London in 1929. She had a long run in Merton ...
Delphine Seyrig
(1932–90),Lebanese-born French actress, who became well known in the early 1960s through Resnais's film L'Année dernière à Marienbad and her performance as Nina in Chekhov's The Seagull. The ...
farce
A form of popular comedy with its distant roots in the improvisations which actors introduced into the text of medieval religious dramas (the word is derived from the word farce, ‘stuffing’). Later ...
Gene Saks
(b. New York, 8 Nov. 1921)Actor and director. Saks began his career acting Off-Broadway, and after appearing in several plays on Broadway turned to directing in 1963. He made ...
Geraldine Page
(b. Kirksville, Mo., 22 Nov. 1924; d. New York, 13 June 1987)Actress. An exponent of the Method school, she first won fame as the unhappy spinster in Summer and ...
Greenwich Theatre
London. 1. The first permanent theatre in Greenwich was opened in 1709, probably in Church Street. Colley Cibber's Love Makes a Man is known to have been produced there the ...
Haymarket Theatre
Leicester. This theatre, opened in 1973, was intended to take the place of the Phoenix, opened 10 years earlier on a site expected to be available for only five years. ...
John Ford
(1586–after 1639),wrote all or a substantial part of 18 plays, of which seven have been lost. Between 1621 and 1625 he collaborated with Dekker and others in at least five plays including The Witch ...
John Godber
(1956– )Playwright and theatre manager, born in Yorkshire, and educated at Bretton Hall College and Leeds University. His major breakthrough came with Bouncers (1983), the first version of which ...
Joking Apart
A: Alan Ayckbourn Pf: 1978, Scarborough Pb: 1979 G: Com. in 2 acts S: English garden, 1966–78 C: 4m, 7f (4 roles to be played by same actress)Richard Clarke and Anthea, a divorcee with two children, ...
Lynne Meadow
(1946– )American director and manager, artistic director of the Manhattan Theatre Club since 1972. Her directing credits include Charles Busch's The Tale of the Allergist's Wife, Donald Margulies's ...
Lyttelton Theatre
The first of the three theatres inside the National Theatre building to be opened, the others being the Cottesloe and the Olivier. Named after Lord Chandos (Oliver Lyttelton), the first ...
Matthew Warchus
(1966– )English director. Since his West End debut with Much Ado About Nothing (1992), he has directed for the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre, the West End, and Broadway ...
